


Die Letzte Flusskreuzfahrt des Vierten Reiches (The Last River Cruise of the Fourth Reich)

by SheliakBob



Category: Creature from the Black Lagoon, Dracula - Fandom, Frankenstein - Fandom, Invisible Agent
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-28
Updated: 2019-05-03
Packaged: 2019-11-07 00:14:35
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 11
Words: 16,153
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17949890
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SheliakBob/pseuds/SheliakBob
Summary: After the fall of the Nazi Regime, several villainous Nazis, all from various Universal Films, escape to South America with a cargo hold of occult items collected by the SS. They are on their way to a hidden plantation to plot the rise of the Fourth Reich, when they take a wrong turn and find themselves trapped in a rather familiar lagoon...





	1. Chapter 1

Der Mann, der nicht Hitler war  
(The Man Who was not Hitler)

“I hate this face!”  
The face in the mirror was famous.  
Dimpled chin, tiny patch of a moustache, down swept lock of black hair. Bleary but intense gray eyes.  
It was a face recognized by millions.  
It was a face that did not belong to the man staring at the mirror.  
The mirror itself barely deserved the name. Small and round, flecked with black blotches where the silver backing had worn away, it was like a crater-pocked moon, rotting in the humid tropical sky.  
“I hate that face too.”  
The voice was hard and harsh. It belonged to his wife, who stared hatefully at him from her bunk against the cabin wall. Her eyes. Glittering through puffy, blackened lids, were sharp as iron nails. Her face was mottled by bruises.  
“And I hate you, for wearing it.”  
The man stroked his famous face with a trembling hand.  
“They would kill me if I didn’t.” he said in a tired voice.  
“A real man would die before letting himself be seen under that…face.”  
The man sighed, squeezing his tired eyes with tired fingers.  
“They would kill you, too.”  
The woman spat.  
“I would rather be dead than see that face for another day.”  
She turned her back to her husband, curling against the hard comfort of damp wooden boards.  
The man sighed.  
At that moment the door to their small but private cabin banged open.  
“They’re waiting for you, ‘Fuhrer’!”  
A hard brute of a man with a weathered face stepped into the roam. He snapped a stiff armed Heil! Salute with one arm, gestured toward glaringly white sunlight beyond the door with the other.  
The man wore sweat-soaked work clothes, ragged trousers and a gray shirt almost black with perspiration, but he wore them like the SS uniform he’d been forced to leave behind.  
“Thank you, Helmut.” The man with the famous face said with a sigh.  
His arm jerked through an elbow-up salute, entirely by habit.  
His wife, curled against the wall, began to sob.  
“I will stay with the Frau, while you are out.”  
There was a steel-sharp edge to the man’s words, an implied threat.  
“Of course, Helmut. Thank you.”  
The man with the famous face stepped through the doorway into blindingly white light. His shoulders squared unconsciously as he passed the threshold.

Ragged cheers greeted him as he stepped out onto a slick, planked deck. He smiled tightly, eyes still blinded by the sunlight. The air was thick with the smell of vegetative rot and muddy water and sweat. He snapped through another automatic salute as cries of “Heil Hitler!” resounded around him. Blinking into half blindness, he ambled about the upper deck of the Tannhauser. Desperate, half-dead men swarmed around him, grabbing his hand, pulling at his clothing, pressing sweaty brows and weeping cheeks against his palms. They crowded around him like starving dogs begging for a morsel from their master. He smiled wearily, patted heads and cheeks, murmured encouraging words. He even spoke a name here and there, smiling when the men he named broke into wild adoring smiles. Shouts of “Heil Hitler!” and “Fuhrer!” followed him about.  
The Man with the Famous Face leaned against creaky gunwales, smiling. He squinted about at the sun-soaked jungle surrounding him. He swatted away clouds of gnats and mosquitos until the men broke out hand fans to wave helpfully around his face. A folding chair was rushed over and he gratefully settled into it. With practiced patience he began to talk to the men about their day, showing a genuine interest in their labors, whispering hoarse words of encouragement, telling weak, oft-repeated jokes which were greeted with uproarious laughter.

“He puts on a good show.” Observed Heiser, mopping sheets of sweat from his face with an already drenched rag.  
“He better.” Snapped Stauffer coldly.  
“It’s his life if he doesn’t.”  
Heiser eyed his comrade from under droopy lids. His jowls still quivered from being wiped down. Already a fresh layer of sweat glistened on his flushed cheeks.  
“I doubt that he would mind that much.”  
Stauffer chuckled with grim humor.  
“I doubt it as well, we are fortunate that he loves his wife as well as he does.”  
Both men shared a moment of cynical mirth.  
Finally Heiser left off chuckling to stare silently at the man who doled out tokens of acknowledgement to the ragged men who clustered around him.  
“What are we doing here, Conrad?” He asked, not for the first time.  
“Surviving.” Replied Stauffer, shifting uncomfortably in his wheelchair. “Preparing for the future!”  
“We don’t have any future.” Karl muttered. “The Fuhrer died in Berlin.”  
Stauffer glared icily at him.  
“I died too, at the hands of that treacherous bastard Ikito. But here I am! Death isn’t what it used to be.”  
Heiser sighed.  
“You don’t have to tell me about that. But what is the point of this…this charade?”  
“The men need it.”  
Strange tropical birds screeched overhead as the boat’s engines chugged fitfully.  
“How long? How long can we keep this pathetic show going?”  
“As long as it takes to reach safety. We should reach the plantation any time now. Once we’re safely settled, out of the reach of our enemies, we can drop pretenses and begin to prepare for tomorrow.”  
Heiser sighed. He squinted at the mercilessly bright sky and wondered, not for the first time, if it were possible that he might melt away, like so much ice cream left in the sun.  
“We should have reached the plantation days ago. If there’s even a plantation to go to. We’re lost. We’re hopelessly lost in this muddy maze of waters.”  
Gruppenfuhrer Conrad Stauffer grunted. He shifted uncomfortably in his wicker backed wheelchair.  
“There is a plantation. I paid a Fuhrer’s ransom for one.” Stauffer ignored the cynical snort of Heiser’s laughter. “But it is true, we should have been there by now. Perhaps it is time to have a talk with our Captain.”  
Stauffer clasped the rim of his chair’s wheels with claw-like fingers and began to creakily roll in the direction of the boat’s pilot house.  
Heiser watched him roll away with something between pity and contemplation. He took a sip of sour lemonade and turned his gaze back to where the Man Who Was Not Hitler fawned over his adoring hounds, hounds who were once Stormtroopers, the most feared men in all of Europe.  
At least they still had something to believe in, Heiser mused. At least they still had the illusion that tomorrow existed and that there might be an end to their humiliation.  
The men who really led them had no such luxury.  
The taste of lemonade was bitter on Heiser’s tongue.

Captain Eric von Molter, who had once guided U-Boat wolfpacks through Arctic seas, squinted through a green fog of jungle foliage, trying to follow the meandering brown path of muddy water that his current command, a creaky, shallow-keeled river cargo boat, wallowed along. He yearned for the pitch and roll of high seas. This muddy ditch of stagnant water felt as shallow and muddled as his own soul had become. The choking tangle of vines and over-sized green leaves that scraped against his bow and smacked the pilot house windows was so thick that he could almost imagine that he was guiding a sinking zeppelin into a crash with the jungle canopy. Only occasional bare brown patches, glinting wetly in the sunshine, reassured him that there was still a “river” of some sort beneath his keel.  
The boat scraped against sunken logs, ground over bars of sticky silt, but still, somehow, found enough water beneath her to stay afloat.  
As long as there was still water beneath his keel, as long as there was still a floating hull beneath his feet, von Molter was still a Captain. He still had a mission to accomplish.  
Eric looked down at the bottle of vodka and the Ruger on the window shelf in front of him. As long as he was still a Captain with a Mission, the choice was still clear. He picked up the bottle and took a long, slow swig of fiery, colorless liquor.  
A voice coughed behind him.  
“Captain, Gruppenfuhrer Stauffer wishes to speak with you.”  
Captain von Molter sighed.  
He eyed the bottle again. He eyed the Ruger again. Once again he chose the bottle.  
After another mouthful of vodka had burned its way down his throat to boil pleasantly in his belly, the Captain let go of the wheel and squeezed past the crewman who waited behind him.  
“Grab the wheel. Keep us on this heading. If you run us aground I will shoot you.”  
Eric belched once before thumping down the short stairway to the deck.  
The crewman stared in horror at the green whips of vegetation that smacked against the window pane. There was a thump and a long grating sound as the boat scraped past some sunken obstacle. The Captain’s Ruger slid across the window-shelf. The bottle of vodka tipped and sloshed before clinking into place.  
The crewman gulped, then grabbed the wheel with frantic hands.  
A quick turn, a desperate squint, another half-turn and the Tannhauser glided smoothly ahead.  
The crewman sighed with relief.  
At the foot of the pilothouse stairs, Captain von Molter paused.  
“Damn.” He muttered disappointedly.  
“Guess I have to talk to Stauffer.”

“Captain von Molter, why aren’t we at Neuer Bergholf?”  
Stauffers voice was icy and sharp as a bayonet.  
Captain von Molter gave him a long, squinting stare and a tight half-snarl of a smile.  
“Because you wouldn’t let me hire any locals who were actually familiar with this swampy labyrinth and the charts you gave me are complete shit. Sir!”  
Stauffer glared angrily.  
“I’m not sure I like your tone, Captain.” The pale-faced cripple clutched a service revolver beneath the blanket over his lap.  
Captain von Molter returned the stare with bleary indifference.  
“Then court-martial me, if you can find enough officers to sit the tribunal. Or shoot me, and let the next qualified naval officer you can find take over.”  
Von Molter shrugged.  
Stauffer fumed. Captain von Molter was the only qualified naval officer left from the fallen Reich, still loyal to the Cause.  
“I don’t need a tribunal, Captain. The Fuhrer can pass summary judgment on his own.  
Von Molter laughed.  
“Sure, if you want to go back to Berlin and dig Him up!”  
“Watch your tongue!” hissed Stauffer pulling his revolver free from the blanket and levelling it at the insubordinate man’s face.  
Captain von Molter stared down the barrel with languid indifference.  
He laughed.  
“Whatever you decide, we’re still stuck in some unmapped backwater ditch in Brazil. Feel free to take the wheel and navigate yourself out, if you’re so inclined. I’m tired of taking orders from a pasty-faced little cripple like you and a phony Fuhrer…”  
Stauffer shot him.  
In retrospect it seemed not a very smart thing to do, but the man’s drunken arrogance and unbridled insubordination seemed an unbearable affront to the Reich, which Stauffer still served with fanatical, if increasingly misplaced devotion.  
Stauffer was still in his chair, glaring at the wide-eyed corpse of the Reich’s last U-Boat captain when the men came running to investigate the shot.  
Smoke roiled lazily from the revolver’s muzzle.  
Bright red blood spread slowly from the sprawled corpse, lapping against the wheels of Stauffer’s chair.  
The men gawked in mute disbelief at their dead Captain and turned suspicious eyes toward Stauffer, who stiffened under their gaze.  
“It was his fault that we missed the proper branch of the river. Captain von Molter’s incompetence was why we have become lost, lost when we are so close to our final refuge!”  
Stauffer’s eyes picked out the face of The Man Who Was Not Hitler amidst the crowd. The imposter’s eyes were wide with horror. Stauffer glared, pouring his will through his gaze into the weak, trembling little man.  
The imposter caught Stauffer’s gaze and quickly deduced the threat behind it.  
“You did what you had to do.” He said somberly. “We’ve lost enough due to incompetence. We cannot afford any more carelessness.”  
Stauffer, somewhat pleasantly surprised, nodded his head gravely.  
“Thank you, my Fuhrer.”  
If Franz Huber had been a professional hired to play his part, instead of a hostage performing at gunpoint, Stauffer would have paid him a bonus for that bit of quick thinking. As it was, Stauffer decided to give the wife one of his private store of cookie tins. A smart commander knew when to be generous to an underling, and to reward loyalty.  
“Take the Fuhrer back to his cabin while we clean up this unfortunate mess.”  
Stauffer’s men leaped to carry out their orders. The body of the deceased Captain was tossed overboard to the crocodiles and the piranhas while an eager throng escorted “The Fuhrer” back below decks.  
Stauffer wheeled back to his favorite spot under the awning that covered the rear edge of the deck. His blood-stained wheels left bright red stripes across the wooden planks.


	2. In das Unbekannte

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A scouting party from the Tannhauser explores the winding jungle river ahead.

In das Unbekannte  
(Into the Unknown)

Facing the grim reality that they were lost in a network of unmapped tributaries, Stauffer and Heiser decided to send the Tannhauser’s motor launch ahead with a scouting party. If, somehow, they were on the right river, the scouts would find their plantation destination and report back. If, however, there was no sign of civilization on the winding river ahead of them, the scouts would look for a stretch of water wide enough to turn the Tannhauser around. If the waterway continued to close in and grow shallower, well, it would be better to know that now, before their cargo ship got hopelessly mired in some dead end swamp.  
Stauffer put Jochen Knacke, one of his own lieutenants in charge of the mission. Lt. Knacke selected Ole Tanzer, a huge burly hulk of a man who had been a shell-handler with the artillery corps, Rolf Friedberg, who’d served in the Kriegsmarine and had at least a passing familiarity with small craft and motors, and Sigamund Wiener, a jittery little man who was a highly decorated sniper with so many kills that he’d stopped counting through the last year of the War. Jochen didn’t like the man’s twitchy eyes or his half-maniacal grin, but he was known to be the best shot on the Tannhauser.  
Despite Heiser’s objections and endless fretting, Stauffer had the men fly a Reich’s flag on the launch, to let the men waiting for them at the plantation know the scouts were from the awaited ship and to raise the worn spirits of his crew.  
It took a frustrating lot of time to load up the launch, swing it off the side of the cargo ship on a winch, and lower it into the water. Half the men on deck were shirtless and slathered with sweat by the time the heavy launch splashed down. But a ragged cheer went up when the launch’s motor sputtered to life and the little boat chugged off, swastika flying. Lt. Knacke stood in stiff salute toward the Fuhrer as his craft slipped into the green tunnel of jungle ahead. Leaves thrashed in their wake and the launch’s battle-flag was visible for several long minutes, a garish blood-red flower blooming in a strange emerald land.  
As the motor launch pushed deeper into the reedy tangle ahead, Lt. Knacke stood in the bow, hacking away with a heavy machete. Ole sat behind him, big biceps bunching and flexing as he tested the depth of the water beneath them with a stout ten foot pole. Rolf lounged in the back, one hand on the rudder, occasionally murmuring words of encouragement to their motor when it sputtered. Sigamund, the sniper, crouched amidships in the launch, glittering eyes constantly scanning the foliage around them.  
Suddenly he rose almost standing, snapping his rifle up, eyes squinting. There was a loud, flat bang, followed immediately by a din of screeching birds fleeing the trees above them. A dark-haired monkey spun and fell as a heavy rifle shell tore through its furry little body. Its shoulder and arm fell separately from the rest.  
Lt. Knacke shouted a curse, then turned to glare at the sniper. Sigamund was grinning wildly, his eyes bright, wide and glittering.   
“Dammit, Wiener! I’ve told you not to waste ammunition!”  
The sniper had started the voyage banging away steadily at birds and crocodiles and the occasional fisherman they passed. He’d been disciplined repeatedly for his indiscriminate slaughter. Without a rifle in hand and a steady stream of targets he grew listless and bored. He would barely mumble at his fellow soldiers. It was only a matter of time before he would get his hands back on his beloved Kar 98 K and start banging away again, grinning, eyes wide, drunk with delight at the red ruin he left along the river banks in the Tannhauser’s wake.  
“I’ve never wasted a bullet! Not one shot. I hit everything I aim at.” Replied the sniper petulantly.  
“Don’t waste your ever-so-accurate shots on harmless dumb animals, then.”  
“Don’t worry. Ole is safe.”  
“Hah.” Laughed the big man, refusing to rise to the bait.  
They continued in silence for awhile, pushing out of reeds into a wider stretch of stagnant water the color of fresh brewed tea. Trees clustered near the banks with branches reaching out and over the water so that the scouting party seemed to be sailing down the center of a wide green tunnel.  
There was another loud flat bang from the rifle.  
“Dammit, Wiener!” Knacke started.  
The twitchy little sniper smiled serenely and pointed at the Lieutenant’s feet. A headless green viper of some sort lie writhing next to Knacke’s boot.  
“It was hanging down from the branches. It would have struck at you in another second. If I hadn’t taken the shot.”  
Knacke cursed again and tried to kick the roiling reptile carcass out of the boat, but the coils curled around his foot from reflex the instant his boot touched them. In the end he had to stoop down and hack the headless corpse to pieces, flipping each separate loop of green scales over the edge with the tip of his machete.  
He glared at the sniper again, for good measure, but couldn’t think of anything to shout at him.  
Wiener returned his glare with a dopey grin and blank, glassy eyes.  
Not for the first time Lt. Knacke wondered how long it would be before he had to kill the crazy little man, before he started murdering the rest of them.  
The Russian Front had done something to the man, broke him in some deep, hidden, essential way. What was left was pure unadulterated murder that walked on two legs and occasionally ate rations.  
Knacke shuddered, feeling cold despite the merciless tropical sun beaming down through breaks in the leafy roof overhead.   
“Water’s deeper here.” Called Ole.   
He pushed at the water with his pole.  
“Can’t touch bottom.”  
The channel they were in was deep enough for the Tannhauser, that was sure enough. Even in the reediest section the center of the stream was more than deep enough for the riverboat to float safely. He was more worried about the width of the stream they were working their way up. Clearly they’d arrived at some sort of local dry season with the river’s water well below its usual depth. All along he could see the sharp outline of banks to either side. The thick vegetation that crowded the stream was actually growing on the naked riverbed, the shallows left high and dry while the deep channel remained filled.  
That the water was growing deeper gave Jochen hope that they would find a spot wide enough to turn the boat around, hopefully soon. It was obvious to him that they were on the wrong tributary. The simple lack of habitation along the river, the absence of piers and docks and fishermen who would line the route to active plantation lands was enough evidence that they’d turned away from civilization, thin as it would become, stretched out along the vast jungle river. Even stranger though was the fact that they’d stopped seeing the occasional wild tribesmen who ghosted earlier stages of their journey, pacing silently through the underbrush, eyeing them distrustfully.  
No one on the Tannhouser had spotted another human being for days now, as if there was something in the jungle that frightened even wild men away. Something dangerous and malevolent and hidden. They all felt it, a presence which seemed to follow them. It probably contributed to Sigamund’s itchy trigger finger.  
Lt. Knacke found his wide spot soon enough. The motorboat broke through a last tangle of flowered vines and suddenly was awash in harsh unfiltered sunlight. An eye-achingly blue sky stretched overhead.  
The motorboat churned its way out into a wide, pristine lagoon, encircled by ramparts of gnarled trees and outcroppings of moss-stained rock. The water beneath them was still and dark and very deep. It was so clear that the miniature lake looked black due to the depths of water that extended further down than the sunlight could reach. Here the water was not stained by vegetative debris and mud. It came up in handfuls of crystal clarity.  
“Umph!” Grunted Ole suddenly. The sounding pole he’d been using fell from his hands and disappeared into the dark water with a soft plop.  
“I could swear that something grabbed the end of my pole and yanked it out of my hands!”  
Rolf made an obscene sailor’s joke and all the men laughed.  
“Probably got caught on a root or something. Maybe a crocodile tried to take a bite out of it.” The Lieutenant said with a smile.  
“Better keep an eye out for crocs” Ole nodded. “This is the perfect spot for them. They might grow mighty big around here. Same for serpents and those fish with the nasty teeth.”  
With a circular gesture of his hand Knacke signaled for Rolf to turn the launch around in preparation for their return trip.  
Sigamund squeezed off another shot and a floating log became a thrashing crocodile, almost nine feet long. It rolled around in wild, slowing circles and slapped the water with a prehistoric looking razored tail.  
“Good shot.” Knacke said, suppressing a shudder. “Brute that size could probably overturn this little boat. I’d hate to get capsized and spilled into whatever the hell lives under all that water.”  
Sigamund tittered with glee and chambered another round. He was standing now, sweeping his rifle in slow half-circles over the water around them. Sweat stood out in drops on his forehead and formed a glistening sheen on his cheeks.  
“I can feel them out there!” he babbled excitedly. “Just like when the Russians tried to creep up on us wearing all white in the snow. Our eyes couldn’t see them, but I knew when they were there. I could feel them watching us. Planning to kill us when they got close enough.”  
“What are you babbling about?” asked Jochen worriedly. He gave a swift non-verbal cue to Rolf who prepared to lunge forward and tackle the sniper if need be.  
“It’s the same feeling!” Sigamund said, exasperated, as if having to explain something obvious to a child. “There’s someone out there. Something! Something smart and deadly. Something that wants to kill us.”  
Suddenly the little man screamed and fired three shots in short succession into the water. Lt. Knacke could see white trails of bullets plunging into the water. Hairs on the back of his neck bristled when he also caught a glimpse of some large dark shape twisting amid the bubbling bullet trails.  
“Probably another croc.” He said, patiently, putting a tentative and on the still hot muzzle of Wiener’s Kar 98 K.   
Sigamund shook his head and sat down suddenly. His face was chalk white. His eyes even wider than ever, glazed over, unblinking.   
“That wasn’t a crocodile.” He replied in a sepulchral tone. “That was the Devil himself!”  
Sigamund looked down at the rifle in his hands, suddenly horrified and aghast at this thing of rolled steel and wooden stock. Crisp, nostril-itching blue streamers of smoke curled out of the muzzle. Sigamund shrieked and dropped it in the bottom of the boat. Edging frantically away from it, as if it had turned into a deadly viper of some kind.  
That made the skin on Lt. Knacke’s arms and neck prickle with dread. What could make gun-crazy Sigamund suddenly fear his own weapon? A few seconds later an even more frightening thought occurred to him. In all the time he’d known Wiener, he’d never seen him fire more than one round at a target. Something in the water terrified him so much that he took THREE shots at it.  
A thick black coil of blood rose to the surface of the water and spread slowly, expanding like an oil-stain.  
“Whatever it was,” Knacke said, gathering himself and patting Sigamund on the shoulder. “You nailed it. It’s either dead or dying.”  
“God help us if it isn’t.” whispered the sniper.  
“Okay, Rolf.” Knacke gestured toward the dark hole that formed the mouth of the channel they’d entered the lagoon from. “Take us back to the Tannhauser.”  
Friedberg opened the throttle and a frothy white wake sprang up behind them. The black slick of blood was pulled apart and spun into thick dark threads by the churning white water.

As the motorboat churned its way out of the lagoon, something ancient and angry watched it from below. There was a hot bruise on its left shoulder and a hot, bleeding furrow seared down the left side of its body, where a high caliber bullet had caught the softer scales of its underarm and burrowed deep into fishy white flesh beneath.  
The thing gasped, gulping in huge mouthfuls of water and squeezing them angrily through fluttering gills.  
One terrible clawed hand reached up toward the black shape slicing across the dimpled sky of its watery realm, as if it could snatch the offending shape from its vision as you might pluck a splinter from one’s hand.  
The muffled roar of the boat’s pounding propellers grew faint as the thing sank unconcerned into the blackness and weeds below.


	3. Die Teufelsbrut  (The Devil's Brood)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> We meet the cabal of surviving Nazi villains masterminding the mission of the Tannhauser.

Die Teufelsbrut   
(The Devil’s Brood)

The Tannhauser rested at anchor while its masters awaited the return of their scouting party. The rusted old ship, which had once borne the name of a Portuguese saint, wallowed in a muddy channel of water. Reeds and long grasses grew thick in the surrounding waters. To the casual eye, the ship seemed beached in a grassy meadow. The tropical sun, harsh and white, grew dim, tarnishing to an orangish-yellow. The water around the ship seemed almost to boil, brewing like a pot of tea under the sweltering hot skies. What shade there was on the wooden-planked deck was cast by gnarled branches that reached out over the shallow river. Vines and moss hung down like tattered drapes from black branches. A swarm of spiders and ticks, blood-sucking leeches and stinging ants rained down from the swaying foliage, testing the patience of the sweat-soaked, tired men who lolled about on the deck, trying to nap through the unbearably humid heat.  
In a low-ceilinged officers’ cabin, just behind and below the pilot house, the remaining masters of the dead Reich grimly laid plans for an uncertain future. Gruppenfuhrer Conrad Stauffer, once a feared general in the SS, glared coldly at his companions through steepled fingers. Heiser, his rotund pale-cheeked subordinate, sprawled in a deck chair next to him. Heiser, sweating in dripping sheets, discarded almost all elements of his former uniform. He wore a sleeveless undershirt and smudged gray pants.   
Stauffer still wore crisply pressed uniform pants and his officer’s cap. But he’d traded the heavy uniform shirt and coat for a charcoal gray button down shirt of a lighter weave and more casual cut. Stauffer did not sweat in the tropical heat. In fact, Conrad Stauffer never sweated, not since his resurrection from an untimely death. He never felt anything but cold. The sun beating down from the cloudless sky above barely seemed to touch him. It was as if ice-water flowed through his veins, driven by a frosty, frozen heart.  
He gazed about the cabin and frowned unhappily. The survivors of his beloved Reich were almost all men more closely associated with the Kaiser than his Fuhrer. Perhaps that is why they had survived and escaped where so many of his peers had perished in those final fiery days, or awaited justice at the hands of the victorious and vengeful Allies. These men were dinosaurs, fossils who survived the collapse of the world that spawned them, who then lived through and survived the fall of the world that had come after theirs, leathery men too cunning to be pulled down by something as trivial as a world consuming inferno.  
There was Count Godeck and Count Ragenstein, monied aristocrats who’d had the sense to see their old order crumbling and jumped to support the Fuhrer, sometimes over the bodies of their own families. Their early allegiance bought them power and authority under the new Reich. Both men had served as trusted advisers to Hitler himself. Along with their Gestapo crony von Zechwitz and the undeniably talented Dr. Lurke, they’d brought Franz Huber, their fake Adolf, a double recruited and crafted to make public appearances in place of the real Fuhrer, as a safety precaution. There were rumors that the men planned to eventually replace the real Hitler with their creation, but Stauffer could never prove that there was any truth to them.   
Stauffer needed their talented impostor so he had to tolerate the condescending elitism of the nobles. But he hated them. He hated their fine clothes, still somehow clean and impeccably pressed even here in this torrid tropical hell. He hated their gold rings, the silver-linked chains of their expensive pocket watches. He hated von Zechwitz’s officious monocle and Godeck’s jeweled lapel pins.  
They had the nerve to openly wear Wehrmacht service medals that owed more to the wealth they’d brought to Hitler’s service than any personal devotion on the part of the men themselves. The aristocrats sipped expensive cognac and laughed at ribald jokes they made about the Allied officers who’d brought them down, enemies yes, but men of greater courage and honor than either of these two pampered parasites.  
Stauffer gritted his teeth.  
He himself was the son of a Baron, but as an unrecognized bastard he’d been forced to work and claw his way up the chain of command. He rose by his wits and his labor, not through any inherited fortune or privilege.   
The other two men in their secret cabal were, likewise, more the Kaiser’s than the Fuhrer’s.  
The two Heinrichs.  
Heinrich von Bock, once a Secret Policeman under the Kaiser, had taken the place of an English aristocrat who’d died a prisoner of war during the Great War. Von Bock masqueraded as the Englishman, Sir Evan Barham, for twenty years, eventually becoming the master of a secret spy ring buried deep in the heart of Britain’s Intelligence Council. For a time, von Bock’s service as the dreaded “Voice of Terror” looked likely to bring about Britain’s fall to the Reich, but the man was tripped up and unmasked by some amateur civilian detective.  
Stauffer snorted, then covered his derisive lapse with his sleeve, claiming an attack of allergies.  
It had cost five of Stauffer’s own men to rescue von Bock from the clutches of the English, an expenditure that he regretted to this day.  
The other Heinrich, von Hinkel, he had somewhat more respect for. Once a secret agent for the Kaiser, von Hinkel rose to command a spy ring operating audaciously in Washington D.C., the capital of the Americans’ hated democracy.  
Von Hinkel was a quiet, unassuming man with a fringe of gray hair and dignified features. His demeanor was that of a slightly flustered college professor, but beneath his harmless exterior lurked a mind of diabolical cunning and a dry, clever wit that Stauffer found endearing.  
Freeing von Hinkel from the Americans had cost Stauffer two more men, a loss he considered worth the price, and a sizeable chunk of Ragenstein’s personal fortune, an expenditure that he regretted not at all.  
Von Hinkel caught Stauffer’s gaze upon him and traded a pained squint and a glance toward the raucously laughing aristocrats, telling Stauffer that he shared his distaste for their supposed “superiors.”  
“I’m worried about the Hubers.” The doctor, Lurke, which was pronounced “Lorca” by the Germans, said. “Anna has been cold and distant ever since her…treatment.”  
Resurrection, you mean, thought Stauffer with a smirk.  
“She’s becoming more withdrawn and hostile. She’s the key to keeping Franz on point. If she deteriorates too much, we might lose him as well.”  
“I wouldn’t worry about Frau Huber.” Stauffer put in laconically. “My man Helmut will keep her in line, and with her, our glorious Fuhrer as well.”  
Dr. Lurke frowned.  
“I’m not sure constant beatings are going to guarantee her obedience indefinitely.”  
Stauffer chuckled sinisterly.  
“It is evident that you have little experience with the methods of the Gestapo, Herr Doctor. Beatings are just the beginning of the process, hammerstrokes that shape the soul on the anvil of our will. Helmut will keep the Huber woman obedient, have no fear.”  
From the look on Lurke’s face it seemed apparent that the doctor was ready to argue the point.  
Stauffer raised one eyebrow.  
The doctor reconsidered his argument and looked away.  
Better. Thought Stauffer.  
Lurke was too young, he thought to himself. Still too idealistic by far. It’s a pity that his teacher and mentor Dr. Kaltenbach did not survive the fall of Berlin. Kaltenbach was a grim, hard man, more like a medical inquisitor than a man of medicine. Stauffer had always liked Kaltenbach.   
The arguments and the endless rounds of false bravado that constituted the Reich’s leadership sessions these days were interrupted by shouts from the crewmen stationed at the ship’s bow.  
“They’re coming back!” came an excited shout.  
Bruno in the pilot house sounded the Tannhauser’s siren to alert the rest of the crew.  
In the distance the chugging growl of an approaching motor could be heard.  
The searchlight at the bow was turned on and directed into the leafy tangle ahead of the ship. The sun had not quite set yet. The sky was still an ugly hot urine yellow, but under the canopy of leaves, amid the tangles of vines, it was already dark as night.  
In a few minutes the motor launch crashed out of the weedy thicket and growled its way up to the ship, cutting its engine at the last moment to glide silently until it bumped softly against the rusted side of Tannhauser’s hull. Ropes and securing lines were tossed down from the upper deck, followed swiftly by a runged ladder.  
A cloud of gasoline fumes wafted into the officers’ cabin, mingling harshly with the sweet smoke from Count Godeck’s pipe.  
“Let’s go see what they’ve found out!” shouted the Count, around the pipe clenched in his teeth. The men pounded out of the cabin to go meet their returning scout party.  
Stauffer jabbed Heiser’s flabby side until the fat man woke up. He’d dozed off halfway through the meeting. Heiser grumbled, wiped spittle from his chins, and grudgingly set to work wheeling Stauffer’s chair down the ramp to the deck.


	4. Nacht der Schatten und Geister  (Night of Shadows and Ghosts)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sleep does not come easy onboard the Tannhauser as strange shapes stalk the night.

Nacht der Schattan und Geister  
(Night of Shadows and Ghosts)

The news proved to be good. While it was true that they had wandered up the wrong tributary, there was a wide lagoon at the end of it where they could turn the Tannhauser around and head back the way they came, back to rivers that were on their maps. The channel to the lagoon was deep enough to float the ship the entire way. The only concern was the width at several points. It would be a tight fit and the Tannhauser was bound to get its sides scraped in the mud along the way, but it looked doable to Lt. Knacke. Preparations were being made to get underway shortly after the break of dawn. Men worked feverishly though the night to lock down all loose cargo and secure the ship for shallow waters.  
Stauffer dismissed the concerns of their newly appointed river pilot, Bruno, who had only taken the wheel briefly at the command of the late Captain von Molter and whose only piloting experience was guiding a U-Boat through open seas. The man argued that he had neither the talent nor the training for such delicate maneuvering. Stauffer was confident that the promise of death by firing squad should he fail would be enough to motivate the reluctant pilot for success.

Franz Huber, the man with Hitler’s face, spent the night anxiously reading by lamplight. Stauffer dutifully had his man Helmut update “The Fuhrer” on their situation. The grinning brute also left behind a tin of very good butter cookies as a reward for Huber’s support for Stauffer’s murder of von Molter. Franz nibbled at a couple of them, driven by hunger and boredom, but the memory of von Molter’s surprised expression and the slowly spreading red puddle of the man’s blood dampened his appetite.  
Anna, on the other hand, seemed happy enough to sit quietly on the edge of her bed and chew through cookie after cookie until the entire tin was empty. She was always hungry these days and never seemed able to eat enough to be satisfied.  
During the day she did little but lie curled up on the single bunk in their cabin, sobbing uncontrollably when she wasn’t deathly silent. But at nightfall, as with every nightfall along the journey so far, she became quiet, sat up, perched on the edge of her bed and stared fixedly at Franz with unblinking hate-filled eyes.  
She’d been unusually quiet this day at sunset. She completely ignored Helmut’s unnecessary slap at her face and hadn’t tried to bite his hand until the third blow. The big brute of a man snatched his hand away from her teeth just in time. When he pulled back as if to punch her, ignoring Franz’s desperate whispered pleas to stop, Anna had smiled widely, baring all her teeth and stared into him with unblinking eyes until he lowered his fist. Helmut made some unimaginative threats, tossed the tin of cookies on a small writing table and backed out of the cabin quickly.  
Franz tried, as he always did at every sunset, to talk to his wife, but she just continued to sit quietly and stare at him.  
There was something wrong with Anna.  
She’d been different ever since the Nazis brought her back to him, after her attempt to assassinate Hitler by mistakenly shooting her own husband.  
Franz was lucky. The SS troops around him, most of whom had no idea that he was not actually their Fuhrer, rushed him to a waiting doctor who was always nearby in the event of any medical emergency. The best surgeons in the entire Reich worked frantically to save his life, ultimately succeeding, much to Franz’s everlasting regret.  
Anna was not so fortunate. Her bullet-riddled body lied bleeding on the hotel floor for quite some time before anyone paid any attention to her, other than to step over her while rushing to save her husband. Von Zechwitz was the first to check her and discover a faint but fading pulse.  
Knowing how valuable she might prove to be for keeping Franz under the Gestapo’s control, von Zechwitz had her body packed in ice and sent to Conrad Stauffer and his Okkultes Korps physicians.  
Using medical secrets discovered by Stauffer and the Korps, they succeeded in bringing Anna back.  
But she was different, changed.  
Fran tried to ignore her stare, reading long into the night until he finally gave up and blew out the lantern. Anna stayed on the narrow bunk while Franz stripped and tried to sleep in a hammock strung up diagonally across their tiny private cabin.  
In the middle of the night, Franz woke up, shivering from a nightmare full of chattering, biting teeth. A full moon had risen during the night. Moonlight streamed through the round porthole of their cabin like a harsh white searchlight.  
Franz blinked and rubbed his eyes.  
When he opened them again he saw Anna standing beside him, staring down at him. The moonlight shone full in her face giving her pallid skin an almost silvery glow. Her eyes were wide, glittering madly. Her lips were open, baring a snarl of a smile.  
“A…Anna?” Franz whispered fearfully.  
Ice water chills rippled down his spine, despite the humid hot-blanket heat of the tropical night.  
Anna blinked when he spoke.  
A startled, frightened expression flickered across her face.  
For just a second her eyes looked normal, he saw his old Anna in them—sad, frightened and confused. Then they clouded, turning hard and cold and hateful again.  
Without a word she turned and shuffled back to the bunk, sat down, and began nibbling on cookies again while staring at him.  
Franz lie back down, staring at the ceiling of their cabin, but sleep wouldn’t come back to him for the rest of that night.

Conrad Stauffer did not really sleep anymore.  
He hadn’t since his personal physician, Dr. Egon Herzig, revived him using medical procedures perfected by Stauffer’s grandfather but still unknown to the medical profession at large. He spent most nights the way he was spending this one, sitting in his wicker wheelchair, pushed into a corner in the tiny cabin he shared with his aide Helmut. On good nights, he would drop into a deep reverie, alone in the darkness with his own thoughts until even those grew quiet. Stauffer practiced holding the resulting silence in his mind for as long as he could. Twice Helmut had checked his breath with a mirror to make sure that he was still alive.  
So far tonight was being a good night.  
Stauffer floated inside the silence, listening somewhat distantly to the screeching of night birds and the strident racket of tropical insects, the endless whistling, chirping, and clicking reminded him of the staccato music of the battlefield. This came as no surprise since many of the insects droning through the night were every bit as big as the bullets whistling over a soldier’s foxhole.  
Stauffer snapped to full crisp awareness when the sounds of the jungle suddenly went silent. Listening hard, the only sounds he could hear beyond the snoring of his aide, were soft footfalls approaching down the narrow corridor outside his cabin. The footsteps were very soft, barely discernible. They stopped just beyond his door. There was a long silent pause, then the handle of his cabin door began to slowly turn.  
The hair on Stauffer’s neck began to rise.  
His hand began to slowly, deliberately, slide to the grip of his sidearm.  
With a click the lock on his door opened and the door swung slowly open.  
A dark shape appeared in the open doorway, somehow discernible against the background gloom of the unlit corridor, a deeper blackness that swirled with prickling phosphors, like the inside of tightly closed eyelids.  
The shape stepped into the cabin.  
“Another step and I will shoot you.” Whispered Stauffer calmly.  
There was a soft, amused chuckle.  
“You may, if you wish, but you will accomplish nothing besides disturbing the sleep of your man on the bunk.”  
The voice was soft, strangely accented, with almost a hint of a lisp. There was a dry amusement to the tone that Stauffer recognized sooner than the voice itself.  
Stauffer gasped.  
“It can’t be you!” He groaned. “You’re dead.”  
Baron Ikito chuckled again.  
“Yes, I know. I did do it myself, after all.”  
The dark shape’s head tilted curiously.  
“As I recall, I also killed you. I remember it quite clearly. The cut was deep and precise. I rarely fail at such things.”  
Stauffer chuckled this time, with a triumphant smugness.  
“And yet, here I am. Baffling, isn’t it?”  
The shadow of Ikito shook its head slowly, sadly.  
“It is unfortunate. I gave you a good death. Clean and honorable. What you have done to yourself is unnatural. A horror!”  
Stauffer’s muscles tensed. There was something in the voice, soft as it was, that sounded wrong. A hungry intensity that Stauffer did not like.  
With reflexes fast as lightning, honed by years on the most dangerous battlefields of war-torn Europe, Stauffer drew his pistol and started to aim at the shadow’s head.  
The shadow of Ikito moved even faster. There was a rasp of sliding steel and abruptly the tip of a very sharp sword dug into the scarred skin of a long-sutured wound.  
Stauffer froze.  
“I can undo this thing that you have done, if you ask…”  
There was both friendliness and pity in Ikito’s voice, along with barely suppressed yearning.  
“If I ask? Are you mad?”  
Ikito’s voice tsked angrily.  
“It has to be your choice. You have to ask.” Continued the voice intensely. “It’s the only way. There can be no peace, for either of us, until this horrible thing you have done is undone.”  
Stauffer laughed.  
“You ARE mad!” he scoffed. “Being buried in German soil has rotted your Japanese mind!”  
Ikito sighed.  
“You should have burned my body, you know. I left instructions.”  
“The Reich hardly concerns itself with the last wishes of treacherous allies.”  
Ikito leaned nearer, his face suddenly appearing, luminous, just inches from Stauffer’s own. The Japanese agent’s round face was haggard and drawn. Dark hollows surrounded glittering pinpoint eyes.  
The sword at Stauffer’s belly pressed harder, cold steel sliced into flesh. A hot trickle of blood seeped down bare skin under his shirt.  
“You have to ask!” Ikito pleaded.  
“Go back to Hell.” Sneered the German.  
There was a sad little sigh, and the shadow of Ikito vanished.  
The feeling of steel biting skin lingered for a few seconds longer, but eventually faded also. Soon after, the night sounds returned to the jungle.  
Stauffer let out a relieved gasp.  
He holstered his pistol with a badly trembling hand.


	5. Ende der Reise  (Journey's End)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Tannhauser pushes through the last leg of its voyage into the unknown.

Ende der Reise  
(Journey’s End)

It was midmorning before the Tannhauser was ready to push on toward the lagoon discovered by their scouting party. Bruno tried twice more to impress upon the officers that while he had served in the Kriegsmarine, on the U-64 under the command of Captain von Molter, he’d worked primarily in the torpedo room and had only piloted the ship briefly. Von Molter insisted that every crewman took the wheel at least once so that any one of them could pilot the U-Boat in a pinch if needed. His turn was on the open sea with no obstacles in sight. That hardly qualified him to try to thread a muddy needle with a glorified barge.  
Stauffer and Count Godeck listened sympathetically, then reiterated their warning that if the Tannhauser was not in the lagoon by nightfall, Bruno could look forward to facing a firing squad. Given Bruno’s expressed doubts, Stauffer was willing to put someone else behind the wheel so Bruno could skip straight to the firing squad, thus avoiding his stressful duty altogether.  
Bruno found himself behind the wheel with the vodka bottle left behind by von Molter in his left hand.  
The riverboat wallowed ahead, swatting brush and weeds aside with its prow, moving at the pace of a man’s steady walk.   
Bruno winced every time a branch smacked against the pilot house window.  
Lt. Knacke crouched at the bow, leaning over the rail and gave Bruno hand signals to guide him.  
Sigamund Wiener lounged, rifle in his lap, back against the pilot house, watching the dense foliage ahead with a wary eye.  
The ship squelched and groaned through mud shoals that got in the way. The screws churned up pieces of chopped reeds and turned the water in the ship’s wake to a frothy brown that greatly resembled chocolate milk.  
The Tannhauser leaned and squeezed through winding S-bends that appeared shorter than the ship’s own length. She was too heavy to move with poles or boat hooks, so the Tannhauser had to rely on the brute strength of its engine to gouge its way through silt when the water proved too shallow or the bend too tight. Clouds of black diesel smoke poured out of the stack and from the open hatch of the engine room.  
The banging of metal tools on metal surfaces was a steady backbeat for the journey, almost keeping time with the pounding of Bruno’s heart. The obscene shouts of the frantic engineers rang in his ears. He knew they were cursing him by name.  
Sometime just a couple of hours before sunset, the water beneath the ship turned deeper and her passage grew smoother. Bruno could almost feel the dented hull rise, floating up out of contact with the muddy bottom, gliding ever steadier over a dark, deep channel.  
Bruno had a bad moment when darkness engulfed the pilot house. But a quick check showed that the gloom came from the forest crowding in and arching over the river. The searchlight mounted at the front of the ship came on with a sizzling hiss and a dull bang. Soon a bright white beam swept over the shadowed waters ahead.  
Bruno squinted through the gloom and the leaves, through tangles of creepers thick as hawsers, crossed like spiderwebs hung in the ship’s path, following the wavy silver of the search beam reflecting off open water. The ship’s prow crashed through anything that hung low enough to impede Tannhauser’s progress. Dull thumps told of impacts between the ship and water-logged tree trunks---soggy, rotted wood broke into floating splinters as the ship’s engine drove it relentlessly on.  
Bruno began to feel the power of the engine throbbing under his feet, he began to exult in the unstoppable metal hulk he rode, crashing through all obstacles. This, he thought, this is how the Panzer crews felt as they smashed through hedgerows and walls and screaming Frenchmen. He smiled and squared his shoulders. He had not asked for this duty, he had argued against it, but here he stood, Bruno Brunke, CAPTAIN of the Tannhauser, the last warship of the Reich, bearing the Fuhrer himself on toward future glory!  
A quite completely empty vodka bottle rolled about the floor, jittering with the vibrations of the engine, jumping with each muffled thump of collision.  
Suddenly the forest around him burst into a cacophony of howls. Deep, booming howls, as if mobs of angry ghosts screamed hate at Tannhauser for invading their realm.  
The searchbeam swung up and to the left, to the right. Black hairy shapes flitted through the branches, eyes glittering wetly, white fangs bared.  
“Guariba Monkeys!” shouted Knacke, looking as relieved as Bruno felt at the revelation.  
Sigamund raised rifle to eye, sighting up into the branches. His finger squeezed. There was a flash of orange flame, a sharp crack echoed in the leafy tunnel. A spent shell clinked across the bow.  
Up among the branches, a black hairy shape as tall and heavy as a toddler stumbled on its feet. Arms waved slowly, flailing in weak circles. Then the beast slumped, fell sprawling across the branch, then slid slowly to one side, falling into the water below with a loud splash.  
The howling ceased in an instant.  
Dozens of hate-filled eyes stared down at the ship. There was a barely audible thump as the prow struck a floating body and crushed it, pushing the broken pieces down into the dark water.  
Hairy shapes disappeared. Some crept behind the boles of trees. Some pulled leafy branches to cover them. Some leaped straight up, vanishing into the dense canopy which thrashed and shuddered as if a hurricane wind tore through the branches.   
Seconds later the Tannhauser scraped past rocks like fangs and burst out of the dark forest into the crimson glow of a sunset.  
The sky glowed incandescent red, like molten metal, bare wisps of black clouds scutted across it. Spread out before the ship, which plowed forward pushing a three-foot wave ahead of it, was the glass smooth open waters of the scouting party’s lagoon.  
The water appeared red as blood, reflecting the last fiery rays of the sinking sun. Jungle growth and rocky scarps already black as night ringed the open water.  
Bruno fell across the wheel. His fingers were numb from gripping the rim like iron clamps for hours on end. His arms trembled uncontrollably. Legs rubbery and weak, he lie across the wheel and laughed with relief, before sobbing quietly.  
Helmut, Stauffer’s aide, leaned in, pistol gripped in hand.  
“The Gruppenfuhrer instructs me to pass on the following message, ‘Well done, Captain! Your success does honor to the Reich and to your Fuhrer, who commends you for your service.’ “  
Helmut grunted as if saying the words pained him. Slowly he holstered his pistol and retreated down the short stairway.  
Bruno wept with gratitude, proud to serve the Reich, to succeed at last.  
As the sun sank out of sight and the sky turned purple and blue as a bruise, the Swastika fluttered over a black lagoon.


	6. Drei Blätter  (Three Leaves)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As the Full Moon rise, Stauffer and his henchmen attend to an important task.

Drei Blätter  
(Three Leaves)

Stauffer wheeled his chair down the narrow corridor between the rows of cabins reserved for the officers. His aide, Helmut, lumbered patiently behind him. When he reached the forward end of the corridor, at the last pair of doors, he knocked on one and called out out, visibly annoyed that he had to do so.  
“Doctor Herzig! It is time, Doctor.”  
Stauffer paused and listened, shifting irritably in his chair as sounds of thumping and clambering came from inside the cabin. Something fell over and thumped on the floor. There was a low, pained groan followed by a burst of profanity. Footsteps stumbled toward the door. Finally, the cabin door swung inward.  
A short, weaselly-looking man hung on the door, one arm hooked over the top. His face was cratered with pockmarks with a pointy chin and long nose. The eyes that blinked at Stauffer were bloodshot, unfocused, and hugely dilated.  
“Is id time ahlreadee?” the emaciated little man slurred. “Must’ve fallen sleep.”  
Stauffer glared venomously.  
Fallen into a needle, more likely.  
Dr. Egon Herzig was notorious as a morphine-fiend, which is why what scant supply the Tannhauser possessed was under lock and key in Dr. Lurke’s cabin.  
“You’ve made a mess of yourself again, Egon. It’s…unseemly.”  
The little man reacted as if he’d been slapped in the face. He straightened, relinquishing his hold on the door, smoothing his hair with one hand and tucking in his shirt with the other. In a subtle, well-practiced gesture he rolled down the sleeve over his left arm. Herzig insisted on wearing long-sleeved shirts despite the dripping sauna heat.  
“Sorry, Sir! I am awake and ready now, Sir!”  
Stauffer sighed.  
If he didn’t need the wretched little rat of a man so much, he would have shot him long ago.  
Stauffer gestured with his head toward the hatch and ladder leading below to the lower deck.  
Dr. Herzig, still bleary-eyed, quickly scampered down the rungs. Helmut hooked his hands under Stauffer’s armpits and easily lifted him from his wheelchair, which was then collapsed and handed down the ladder to Herzig, who immediately unfolded it. Stauffer was lowered down the hatch and guided back into his chair. A few seconds later, after Helmut squeezed his burly body down the narrow opening, Stauffer was wheeling though the empty galley and mess of the Tannhauser. Helmut opened another hatch door which led into what would normally have been the crew barracks, but was currently crammed with boxes of supplies. The crew, not more than thirty men all told, a pathetic remnant of a war-machine that had fielded armies in the millions just a couple of years before, preferred to sleep on the open deck above.  
They hurried through the barracks, where each man’s rifle was cleaned and laid out on his bunk, as if sleeping, until they came to another hatchway.  
Here a huge gorilla of a man, a wide-shouldered brute even bigger than Helmut stood stiffly at attention. He seemed oblivious to the sweat soaking through his uniform, even to the drops of perspiration that hung about to drip from the end of his broken nose.  
“Gruppenfuhrer! Heil Hitler!” the man shouted, snapping out a stiff-armed salute.  
“Heil Hitler.” Replied Stauffer casually, waving one hand somewhat languidly.  
Dr. Herzig giggled slightly before Helmut glared at him.  
“Major Profe, we have come to inspect the special collection!”  
“Yes, Sir!”  
With surprising grace, the huge guard stepped aside and swung open the door to the Tannhauser’s cargo hold.  
The room beyond was musty and dark until Helmut flipped a switch which turned on the bare bulbs on wires that illuminated the hold. The room was crowded with crates and lock-boxes and carrying cases, all stacked haphazardly. A massive ten foot long wooden crate dominated the center or the room, while two somewhat shorter crates were stood up on end against the walls. The rest of the jumble was clustered and wedged in around these three main boxes.  
Stauffer sighed. There was sadness in his eyes. Absent-mindedly he pulled out a handkerchief and polished the round lenses of his glasses.  
“Once we had castles full of relics. Libraries full of forbidden books, all the mysteries of the World, sought out, hunted, pulled from their dark hiding places. Now this, this is all that is left of the greatest Occult collection the World has ever seen. Barely enough to stock a travelling carnival sideshow.”  
“Even so,” Dr. Herzig observed eagerly, “Even so, there is enough in this one room to shock so-called Modern Science into silence. Enough to change the course of History, to rewrite the Destiny of the whole world!”  
Stauffer nodded.  
“In time, once we have regrouped, healed our wounds, we shall do just that!”  
There was a mad passion writ on the faces of both men.  
Helmut glanced around at the dusty boxes and stifled a yawn.  
Stauffer checked his pocket watch.  
“We must hurry. The Full Moon has already risen.”  
Herzig and Helmut hurried to perform their assigned duties. Stauffer watched impatiently from the doorway. There was not enough room in the crowded cargo hold to maneuver his wheelchair.  
Helmut hefted a crowbar and pulled open the lid of one of the upright crates.   
Inside there was a scarred and battered Egyptian sarcophagus. Helmut set the lid aside while he pulled open the sarcophagus, a trophy brought back by Rommel and the Afrika Korps.  
A dried up, shriveled mummy, swathed with cloth wrappings rested within. Much of the face and the whole right side including the right arm and leg were damaged by fire, crusted with black carbonized scales.  
Herzig opened a lock box which contained a small brazier and a bundle of dried leaves.  
“Remember,” instructed Stauffer. “It’s just three leaves to keep the heart beating…”


	7. Albträume des Schwarzen Lagune  (Nightmares of the Black Lagoon)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Strange dreams trouble the crew of the Tannhauser as they try to sleep on the still waters of the mysterious tropical lagoon.

Albträume des Schwarzen Lagune  
(Nightmares of the Black Lagoon)

The Tannhauser rode peacefully at anchor in the lagoon, a dark gray hulk on a mirror smooth sheet of water that was turned silver-white by a full moon. The steady staccato pulse of the night-time jungle was disrupted only by the rattling of her generator. A harsh white search-beam sliced through the night, scything across the waters in fitful sweeps, zigzagging back and forth, as if trying to catch something unawares.  
“What are you looking for, Sigamund?” asked Lt. Knocke tiredly.  
“They’re out there. I can feel them.” Replied the sniper as he swung the searchlight through another arc.  
“It’s all in your head.” Muttered Knocke.  
“They’re there.” Insisted Wiener stubbornly. “Just below the surface. Watching us. I can feel them. Like an itch in the brain. Cold and angry. Just like the Russians!”  
Knocke dismissed the ranting of the crazy little man with a wave of his hand.  
“Just keep it quiet. Some of us are trying to sleep.” Knocke yawned.  
Newly promoted Captain Brunke was already fast asleep, sprawled on the forward deck. He would have slept in the pilot house on the floor, if there’d been room.  
Bruno twitched and groaned as he slept, face contorted with dread.

In his dream the Tannhauser floated free, engine dead and smoking, the pilot’s wheel useless. Beneath the water, just under the ship, circled an antediluvian monster, thirty feet long. A scaled dinosaur-thing with a lashing alligator’s tail. While Bruno frantically tried to coax the ship into motion, the lurking creature swam ever nearer, mouth twisted in a hungry, fanged grin.

In the Huber’s cabin, Anna sat on the edge of her bunk, staring at her husband snoring in his bunk. Her wide unblinking eyes stared straight into his dreams.  
In those dreams, she and her husband flew slowly over an orchard of trees, black-barked and bare branched as if in the dead of winter, though the sky around them was warm as bathwater. Warm as blood.  
Her husband held her hand tightly, looked into her eyes lovingly, a boyish grin on his face.  
“Oh, Franz!” Anna murmured, feeling a fleeting moment of happiness in her cold heart.  
Then something changed. A ripple passed over them, jolting the smooth glide of their flight. The sky around them turned humid and dank, grew thicker until it became steaming tropical water. Instead of flying they swam, desperately, arms sweeping, legs kicking, trying to resist an inexorable undertow that pulled them deeper.  
The orchard of trees became a cluster of carnivorous aquatic plants, reaching for them with rubbery black vines. Dozens of whisker-lined orifices gaped and puckered on the oily trunks.   
Franz looked at her, wide-eyed with horror. She knew that he knew that he could reach the surface, but only if he let her go and struggled to save himself. His fingers trembled, but his grip tightened, and as the tentacle branches whipped around their legs he tried to say something to her, but only a spherical silvery bubble of air came out…  
Anna Huber screamed. She leaped to her feet and squeezed her eyes shut to blot out the vision of her husband’s dream.

Karl Heiser woke with a start, arms and legs fumbling as he swung in his hammock, strung between the deck railing and the mast of the cargo crane at the stern of the ship.   
The Huber woman was screaming, again.   
He wiped fat fingers over his damp face.  
She always screamed in the middle of the night, even if he was the only one who seemed to hear her.  
Karl sighed.  
As one of the senior officers on the ship, he could have had a private cabin, like the others. But Heiser couldn’t stand the hot box heat of a cramped stateroom. He preferred to sleep out on the open deck, with most of the men. The only privilege of his rank being the hammock he swung in, while the enlisted men slept huddled together on the bare wooden desk.   
The clouds of mosquitoes and other tropical insects that tormented the men never bothered Heiser. They apparently didn’t like the taste of his blood.   
Restless, now that he was awake, Heiser swung and arm and a leg to rock his hammock. He stared dreamily at the Moon’s reflection in the still waters and fantasized about lobster dinners with that lovely blonde, Maria that Stauffer had been so fond of.  
His reverie was disturbed by ripples that scattered the Moon’s reflection, ripples that seemed to come from nowhere, breaking up the still waters under a breeze-less sky.

The ritual complete, Dr. Herzig carefully packed away the ceremonial brazier and the bronze ladle inscribed with rows of hieroglyphics. He closed the cedar chest full of dried leaves and placed everything back in the lockbox where it would be safe until the next Full Moon.   
“There is one other thing, Herr Doctor.” Stauffer said, with uncharacteristic hesitancy.  
Doctor Herzig listened with a raised eyebrow as the fidgeting SS commander ordered him to dig out a certain black case, carefully labelled in Stauffer’s own handwriting, and checked the contents.  
Inside he found bundles of papers and little black books, all filled by precise Japanese characters in neat vertical rows, a white silk garment stained with dried blood—carefully folded, a cigarette holder, a man’s watch—very expensive, and round-rimmed glasses.  
“There should be a short Oriental sword as well. In an ornate scabbard. Very sharp.”  
Herzig dug around in the case, which was not very big, slightly smaller than those normally used for musical instruments.  
“There isn’t any sword.” Herzig reported with a shrug.  
“There HAS to be! I packed it in there myself.”  
Herzig stared at Stauffer, amused to see the normally stoic SS officer in a near panic. Without a word he spilled the contents of the case onto the top of a crate and gestured eloquently.   
“No sword.”  
Stauffer raised a clenched fist to his mouth and shook it angrily.  
With clear, precise wording, Stauffer described his recent visitation by some dead Japanese baron named Ikito and how he’d been injured slightly by the very sword they were looking for.  
“You had a nightmare.” Herzig said, somewhat smugly. “Anyone can have one.”  
“No nightmare did THIS!”  
Stauffer unfastened a few buttons and pulled his shirt open, revealing a fresh cut overlaying the scars of the sutures Herzig himself once sewed into the man’s flesh. A drop of fresh blood seeped out from under the dried crust of the cut to trickle down Stauffer’s fish-belly white stomach.  
“We should treat that wound.” Herzig said, a gleam coming into his eyes. “Even small cuts can fester quickly in this climate.”  
Stauffer snorted with derision as he rebuttoned his shirt.  
“I haven’t had so much as a sniffle or a cold since…The Procedure. I don’t believe that I need fear mundane infections anymore.”  
Herzig licked his lips.  
“If…if the injury troubles you, I could talk to Dr. Lurke. Maybe get something for the pain…”  
Stuffer snorted in disgust and wheeled away from the door to the cargo hold.  
Helmut stared, pointedly, at Herzig who shrugged and began to shove Ikito’s personal effects into their case.


	8. Nacht der Kreatur

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Tannhauser is attacked in the wee hours by an amphibious monster, a familiar "creature".

Nacht der Kreatur  
(Night of the Creature)

Beneath the smooth surface of the lagoon a thing glared up at the intruders.   
A harsh beam of bright white light swept overhead, stabbing misty rays deep into the clear waters. The thing kicked away, narrowly avoiding the light several times. No matter how cleverly the thing tried to swim near the intruders’ vessel, the ray of light cut off its approach. Whoever controlled the light seemed almost able to read the predatory thoughts in the creature’s mind.  
It snapped its gaping mouth shut in annoyance. Water pushed hard through angrily fluttering gills. Sweeping its huge webbed mitts of hands and kicking hard, the creature plunged deep below the surface and began to circle warily toward the rear of the ship. It reached out and grabbed hold of the heavy iron chain that connected the ship to its anchor, marveling at the strange cold feel of the metal.  
With inhuman patience born of eons of hunting prey, the creature drifted motionless at the chain, waiting for the brightly shining moon overhead to set.  
The moon set about three hours before dawn, plunging the tropical lagoon into total darkness. Overhead the sky was dusted white with stars, but the jungle and the surface of the waters were pitch black. The only light came from the searchlight at the bow of the ship, which still drifted about in slow, weary arcs. Even that flickered and grew yellowish as the generator began to sputter down, running low on fuel.  
The creature’s eyes widened, thin membranous lids, like milk scum, rolled up. The thing took a deep gulp of water and seemed to shudder out of a half-trance. Looking upward at the black bulk silhouetted beneath a starry sky, its cold blood began to pound.  
Stealthily it began to rise, climbing hand over hand up the convenient iron chain.  
It broke the water silently.  
Above, the generator coughed through its last cupfuls of gasoline. The snorts and rhythmic snoring of sleeping mammals were the only signs of life, but the creature, a wary and cunning hunter, soon picked out the steadier breathing of the lone sentry sitting his lonely watch at the ship’s stern.  
A heavily scaled arm reached up, long talons scraped against the rusted hull. A black shape climbed silently up the rough surface with only starshine to glisten wetly on its huge body.  
Armin Stricker sucked the last pungent fumes out of the stub of the last cigarette he would ever smoke. He still had a couple more, secreted away in his chest pocket, but he never allowed himself more than one at a time, and then only during his turns at night watch. Otherwise the rapacious vermin who were his comrades, if not his friends, would insist on him sharing his stash and the cigarettes would have been gone long ago.  
There were some things that you never shared with anyone but the closest of friends. A beautiful woman, the last cold bottle of beer, or precious cigarettes hoarded from tobacco shops long reduced to smoke and rubble by American bombs. The last of Armin’s closest friends died defending Berlin, therefore his cigarettes were his and his alone.  
Tangy blue plumes of smoke leaked from his nostrils, released only grudgingly as there were few puffs remaining in the butt pinched between finger and thumb.   
Behind him, a wide webbed hand reached over the railing, silently grasping for a handhold.  
Stricker sniffed. Beneath the pleasant tingle of tobacco smoke in his nose, there was a sudden whiff of wet bog stench. Something like algae and mud and a wet reptilian musk that he couldn’t quite place.  
As he sniffed the air and pondered, a huge hand reached around his head and clamped onto his face. Inches long talons dug cruelly into his skin. A wet palm pressed hard against his mouth, breaking the delicate cartilage of his nose. Armin’s eyes went wide and bulged in pain. A scream battled fiercely to escape his mouth but was muffled by the hand’s remorseless grip. Then the fingers flexed, squeezing toward a clenched fist. The bones in Armin’s face shattered like cheap porcelain. The webbed hand pulled away, bearing with it the crushed red pulp that used to be Armin Stricker’s face.  
A tiny butt of lit cigarette dropped from nerveless, twitching fingers to burn redly, and unappreciated, on the deck. Its last coil of smoke twisted upward as Stricker’s body slumped softly beside it.  
The creature stood on the deck, chest heaving as it gulped at the horridly thin air. Men slept soundly, sprawled and curled, sweating, snoring, packed one against the other on the wooden deck before it. The smell of warm meat and hot red mammal blood filled the creature’s gaping mouth.  
It let out a long rasping bellow, like that of a bull alligator only deeper, and much louder. Then it began stamping with its finned feet and slashing wildly with its claws. Fresh blood like hot summer rain showered down all around it. Soon ribbons of meat trailed behind its talons, like red streamers in a victory parade. Bits of broken bone fell like brittle confetti, rattling on the deck.

The bellow woke Heiser, who’d just finally succeeded in rocking himself to sleep. The sudden screams of dying men jolted him out of his hammock. He landed on bare feet, his boots pulled off and tucked to one side on the hammock. He stumbled a few steps toward the sounds before tripping over a drowsy Stormtrooper just rising from his sleep. He hit the deck hard but barely grimaced. Heiser’s fingers fumbled at the clasp on his holster, scrabbling to draw his sidearm.  
Some kind of monster was tearing through his men as if they were paper dolls.   
Sticky drops of blood pattered all around him and splattered his face. Heiser licked his lips, something horrible stirring to life deep in his belly. He broke into a wild wide grin as he lumbered to his feet and charged forward, all thought of the pistol at his side forgotten.  
Ole Tanzer was a big man, huge really. The handlebar mustache that he’d let grow back in after ditching his uniform was mostly gray and the top of his head had gone bald sometime during the war, but he was still an iron-muscled bear of a man. When dying men’s screams woke him from a nightmare about drowning, he sat up with a roar. When the top half of Klaus Korsch landed flopping in his lap, spilling entrails all over his legs, he leaped to his feet, fists already swinging.  
His knuckles hit something hard and rubbery and wet. He kept swinging at the shape in the blackness around him. His fist hit a face of some kind, gaping mouth and spongy eyes. He raked fingers across something frilled and stretchy, clawing at slit-like openings.  
Whatever it was, he hurt the thing in the dark. He could tell from the way its bullfrog bellow changed pitch and became more of a gurgling hiss.  
The only thought in his mind was to protect the Fuhrer, who slept in a cabin just a few meters from where Ole stood, fighting a monster.  
“For the Fatherland! For Hitler!” he shouted and threw his shoulder into the dripping black hulk before him. Ole expected that his enemy would be knocked off its feet, thrown to the deck, probably with broken ribs from the impact. He was sorely mistaken.  
The creature stumbled back a step or two, but didn’t fall. It was bigger and much heavier than the burly artillery man, something Ole Tanzer had never encountered before. Ole threw his arms around the tire-rubber hard form and tried to lift and throw it.   
The thing didn’t budge.  
It shrugged off his bearhug as if he were a child. Sharp talons gouged into his side. More raked across his face, puncturing one eye and ripping his nose completely off. Ole barely had time to register the pain, mostly just dull thuds and a gut-chilling cold at first. The talons in his side jerked hard. Something hot and wet spilled onto his feet.  
Ole was just beginning to realize with horror that he was probably dying when his opponent hefted him off the deck, twisted, snapping bones all through his torso, and flung him far out over the water.  
“I’m flying!” Ole marveled dully.  
His body fell, crashing into warm water, but Ole seemed to just keep on flying, falling upward into a starry sky instead of sinking into unknown depths below.

Oblivious to any danger, driven by a wild, hungry, uncontrollable fury, Karl Heiser waded into the fight against the creature attacking his men. His bare toes squelched through spilled entrails, slick blood, and bits of torn flesh, but he didn’t even stumble. He swung his fists at a slick, wet blackness ahead of him. Jabbed fat fingers at face and throat in pile-driving blows. Heiser gnashed his teeth and growled like an animal, going toe to toe against the massively bigger monster he fought, and somehow held his own.  
One of the men who witnessed that fight, and lived to describe it, swore that Heiser’s eyes actually glowed with a crackling, flickering electric light.   
The fat, often foolish, SS officer batted aside claws swung at his face and stomped hard on finned toes.  
Most chillingly, Karl Heiser laughed!  
It was a deep, jolly, mad kind of laugh that sent chills through those who heard it.  
How the battle between Heiser and the attacking creature might have turned out would never be known, for at that moment Sigamund Wiener came charging into the fight, running along the narrow foot wide strip of decking that skirted the stateroom compartments and connected the forward and main decks. He held his rifle up to his eye and fired as he charged.  
White-orange flashes gave men the first glimpses of the thing they fought. Taller than any man, body covered with thick bands of scales. Wide black fishy eyes, gaping mouth, frilled gills and massive webbed catcher’s mitt hands. It was a thing out of antediluvian nightmares!  
Two of Sigamund’s bullets buzzed angrily by, but at least one hit the creature with a loud meaty thwap. Curiously cold blood splattered across the deck.  
With another raspy hiss, the creature turned and dove over the railing, leaping far from the ship with a great crash of splashing water.  
Sigamund kept on coming, screaming and squeezing off shot after shot. He ran up to the railing, planted one foot on it and seemed prepared to climb up and over in pursuit of the monster. It took two men to grab the little sniper and wrestle him back onto the deck. No one even tried to pry the rifle out of his mad clutch.  
Colonel Heiser stepped over to the struggling sharpshooter, looked him square in the eye and whispered, “Calm yourself.”  
Immediately Wiener went limp and slumped to the deck. His rifle clattered next to his feet. His eyes were wide and he tried to stammer something.  
“Shh!” commanded Heiser, licking blood from his fingers.  
Sigamund fell into a deep, quiet sleep.


	9. Blut auf den Deck

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Tannhauser makes a hasty retreat after the past night's carnage.

Blut auf den Deck  
(Blood on the Deck)

Dawn came, eventually.  
The Sun rose pink, then turned bright and golden.  
Armed men patrolled the upper deck, still awash with drying blood and bits of gore. When the panic and confusion died down, the losses were totaled. Five men were dead, half a dozen more were injured, two of them so severely that there was little hope of their recover. One man was missing. Big Ole Tanzer, and presumed dead. The survivors were dazed, shakily walking off rattled nerves and shock.  
The last active unit of the Reich was reduced to less than twenty men.   
The Fuhrer himself, flanked by Colonel Von Zechwitz and Major Mampe, emerged from his cabin to walk stiffly around the gore-splattered deck, pausing to talk to the men, singly and in small groups. He placed his hand on shoulders, which immediately squared away, patted the occasional cheek. He kept his face stony, determined, but there was sadness and horror in his eyes. By the end of his tour of the deck the arm which returned the men’s salutes trembled visibly.  
“For God’s sake, get him back below before he starts crying!” whispered Stauffer angrily.  
Heiser shook his head.  
“No, it’s good that the men think he cares for them. A little compassion now will bring more devout loyalty later, when it might be needed.”  
Stauffer snorted. “These are the most fanatically loyal men left from the most highly disciplined units the Reich ever fielded. If their devotion to their ‘Fuhrer’ was any less than perfect, I would have shot them myself by now!”  
Heiser cast a sidelong look at his superior.  
“You can’t just shoot everyone who annoys or disappoints you. There are few enough of us left as it is.”  
“Once we make it to Neuer Bergholf, I’ll MAKE more men if we need them!”  
“IF we make it to Neuer Bergholf.”  
“Careful, Heiser! That sounds like defeatism.”  
Heiser let out a gut-bouncing guffaw.  
“I don’t know if you’ve noticed, Conrad, but we WERE defeated. Soundly. Completely for all practical purposes.”  
Stauffer glared at him through slitted lids.  
“I should shoot you for that!” he hissed.  
Heiser shrugged.  
“I’ve been shot before.”  
Stauffer started to make an angry retort, hand actually going to his sidearm. But Heiser raised his hands in placating surrender.  
“Forgive me, Grupphenfuhrer. I was merely making a joke. Gallows humor. This bloody business has me rather unnerved.”  
Slowly Stauffer relaxed. It was like watching an angry cobra uncoil.  
Stauffer nodded stiffly.  
“Tell the men to clean up this mess. And get HIM below decks already.”  
Heiser nodded and added a salute for good measure. Stauffer loved salutes.  
The crippled general rolled stiffly away, the muscles of his jaw still set angrily.  
Heiser watched him roll up the ramp to the Officers’ cabin. Then he turned to watch Franz Huber give on last “Sieg Heil!” and wave wearily to his men, who sent up a ragged cheer.  
“He really is better at this than the Real Thing was.” Heiser thought to himself. The pudgy man yawned, ran chubby fingers through his brown-blonde curls. He rubbed at the stubble growing on his cheeks.  
Time for a nap! He decided, ambling back toward his empty hammock.  
He didn’t issue any orders at all to the men. They’ll figure it out on their own, he mused.   
Thick black flies were beginning to cluster over the spilled blood on the deck, forming dark knots that rose in angry buzzing clouds whenever anyone came near.

The plan originally was to rest at anchor in the lagoon, drawing fresh water for the tanks and fishing to restock their dwindling food stocks, until the clouds on the horizon finally arrived, bringing rain to raise the water levels in the channel they would have to navigate back down to reach the main river. But with the past night’s carnage, it was decided that they should leave the lagoon as fast as they could turn the ship around.  
Water was pumped up and sprayed across the deck through a long rubber hose. The lagoon’s water was fresh and clear and after being tested with some trepidation was declared, “As sweet as any spring water I’ve ever tasted!” Indeed, the lagoon seemed to be fed by some underground spring rather than by run-off from the surrounding jungle. As soon as the bloodied deck was hosed clean, the men stripped off their shirts, and sometimes more, to enjoy an impromptu shower.  
The Tannhauser left behind a trail of oil and grease, blood and sweat, in its wake. It was a visible film with rainbow sheens that marred the pure glassy surface of the water.  
After a long lazy loop around the circumference of the lagoon, Captain Brunke angled the ship toward the notch between two moss-covered boulders that marked the only outlet from the lagoon.  
Was it really that small? He thought, shifting the wheel a couple of degrees. How did the Tannhauser fit through that the first time? He swallowed hard as drops of perspiration beaded his brow.  
He had no more than formulated his doubts when the bow of the ship plunged into deep shadows cast by the surrounding trees and it was too late to line up for a different approach.  
The sides of the ship screeched as it scraped its way between the rocks.   
Soon twigs and drooping vines were once more smacking against the pilot house window. The Tannhauser steamed into darkness mottled with green and white patches of sunlight.

In the lagoon, black eyes watched the ship’s retreat. A green hairless head sank into the cool waters.  
No, the prey wouldn’t escape that easily! Blood had been spilled. Pain had been given. There were still scores to be settled.  
With a strong kick and a one-armed sweep, the creature rushed forward, a scaly torpedo homing in on its target.


	10. Scheiße Sturm (Shit Storm)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The ship is attacked by unhappy monkeys, with lethal consequences.

Scheiße Sturm  
(Shit Storm)

Bright, glittering eyes watched the Tannhauser as it nudged carefully through the shadowed channel below. Silent bodies leapt through leafy darkness. Teeth were bared, silently. Diesel fumes from the ship’s smokestack wafted through the treetops, leaving an oily film on virgin green leaves.  
Brunke leaned forward, belly and hands on the wheel, as he peered down at the water below. It was just a flickering slick gleam in the shadows, at first. It had been nearly sunset when the ship threaded this murky maze the day before. Now, as the ship chugged slowly onward, with a noontime sun blazing overhead the river was green and gray. Sunlight glinted in rippled patches on the water. It was dark, compared to the merciless glare of an unfiltered tropical day, but there was no need for the searchlight this time.  
Bruno was startled as something hit the pilot house window directly in front of his face. A thick, runny clod of yellowish brown was splattered across the window. Foul-looking drops slid down the glass.  
“What the…”  
Seconds later it sounded like the ship was sailing through a hailstorm. Thumps and bangs sounded from every side of the little pilot house. Soon there were angry shouts and the bark of gunfire, sporadic pops at first but growing into a steady fusillade. Somewhere on the deck behind him the chatter of a machine-gun opened up, staccato barks echoed by the rattle of spent shells raining on the planks.  
“Cease fire! Cease fire, damn you!” shouted an angry voice. “Stop wasting rounds, you fools!”  
There were more angry shouts. The rate of gunfire slowed significantly but didn’t stop. More shouting.  
Then there was a single bang from a heavy revolver, followed by a loud splash.  
The guns fell silent.  
Thumps and thuds continued as the bombardment of the ship continued unabated.  
An eerie chorus of howls began to rise from the surrounding jungle.  
The pilot house window was nearly obscured by splats and splatters of filth.  
“Much more of this and I’ll have to stop the ship.” Muttered Bruno.  
More out of annoyance than by any plan, he grabbed the chain hanging by his head and pulled hard.  
The Tannhauser’s steam-whistle let out an ear-rattling, piercing shriek.  
The pounding of clods hitting the roof ceased immediately. Tree branches all around the ship shook as if torn by hurricane winds. Soon the ship was surrounded by nothing but falling leaves and birdsong.  
Footsteps thumped up the stairs toward the tiny bridge. Helmut poked his head in and grinned at Bruno.  
“Good thinking with the whistle, Captain. The Gruppenfuhrer, Herr Stauffer, commends your fast thinking and says that you are to be promoted!”  
Bruno blinked and smiled wryly.  
“I’m already Captain. What does he plan to promote me to?”  
Helmut shrugged.  
“You’re in command of the entire navy of the Reich.” He said lightly. “You might as well call yourself Admiral.”  
Helmut chuckled and ducked back down the stairs.  
Brunke shook his head.  
From Torpedo Chief to Admiral, in two days.   
Madness.

“Well, eloquent as ever, Herr Stauffer.” Heiser spoke with dead-pan sincerity as he watched the ripples spread from where the dead body splashed into the river.  
“Discipline must be maintained.” Growled Stauffer, wiping monkey shit off his bare head with a handkerchief.  
“He’ll never do it again.” Heiser noted grimly.  
“Are you laughing at me, Karl?”  
Cordite-flavored smoke still curled from the muzzle of Stauffer’s gun.  
“Not at all, Sir.” Spoken calmly, diplomatically. “Why don’t you go back below and put on a clean shirt while I coordinate the men in cleaning up this mess?”  
Stauffer gazed about the filth-splattered deck, over the carefully down turned eyes of sullen men.  
“Very good. Helmut!”   
Stauffer called for his aide to help him in his chair down the few steps to the crew cabin.  
Von Zechwitz swaggered down the ramp from the Command Cabin.  
“Did he just shoot another one of the men?” The Colonel asked, incredulous. His clothes were impeccably clean. He held a martini glass full of clear liquor in one hand.  
Heiser nodded somberly.  
Von Zechwitz stepped on to the main deck, making sure not to soil his shiny black boots on any of the stinking piles. He wrinkled his nose and took a long sip from his drink.  
Heiser started barking orders and directing hastily assembled cleaning crews.  
Von Zechwitz shook his head.  
“Stauffer is losing it. The man’s gone mad. He’ll kill us all eventually, mark my words.”  
“Maybe he’ll get better once we reach the plantation.”  
“If we ever do reach this plantation of his. If it even exists.”  
“Defeatsim, Herr Colonel?” Heiser asked with feigned shock.  
“We HAVE been defeated. Everyone knows that, except Stauffer.”  
Heiser chuckled silently.  
Von Zechwitz shook his head again.   
He drained his drink and then stared mournfully at the empty glass, and turned to return to the cabin.  
The Colonel paused a couple of steps up the ramp.  
“Do you want to join us for a drink, Karl? The air smells cleaner up here.”  
Heiser shook his head.  
“I never drink, vodka.”

At first the men planned to hose off the deck. One end of the hose was dropped in the river, two men manned the manual pump. After a few vigorous pushes, coffee-colored water spilled out over the soiled planks. The nearest men pinched their noses and backed rapidly away. The stench of muck and jungle rot struck Heiser in the face like a foul soggy blanket.  
“Halt! Halt!” he shouted.  
“That smells even worse than the monkey shit!” he muttered in disbelief.  
Eventually the men resorted to wiping the filth up with rags made from their own shirts. Many had been hit during the monkeys’ barrage and were too foul to wear. All of them were sweat-soaked and starting to rot off the men’s bodies. Several pairs of pants suffered the same fate. When it was done, the filth-crusted rags were thrown overboard.  
Heiser watched half-naked men, torsos gleaming with sweat, as they sluggishly worked around the deck. Rifles were stacked in conical piles. There was the occasional crude joke and weak ripples of laughter.  
Is this what we have been reduced to? Wondered Heiser sadly. The very cream of manhood from the most sophisticated society the World has ever seen, men from the nation of Wagner and Goethe and Nietzsche—now near naked savages, slowly starving in an emerald jungle hell.  
“Damn you, Stauffer.” He whispered. “Why didn’t you just leave me dead? Better that than to witness this shame.”


	11. Blinder Passagier (Stowaway)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An unwanted passenger slithers aboard the ship, causing death and chaos.

Blinder Passagier  
(Stowaway)

The Tannhauser wallowed down a tunnel of thick green forest that pulsed with every breeze. Everything was tinted green by the sunlight filtering down through translucent leaves. White specks and blotches of light jittered about with the breezes. The ship’s path was easy to trace, a clear scar of open water wound drunkenly through tangles of reeds and marsh grasses. The trail Tannhauser ripped through the plant-choked channel was milk chocolate brown from mud churned up by the boat’s straining screw.  
Something long and dark sinuously slipped through the water until it swam alongside the slowly steaming ship. A long scaled arm reached up, feeling about with talons until it discovered the rim of a round porthole window, open to allow air into the lower deck. Once a handhold was established, the creature pulled itself up, clawed feet splayed against the rust-scaled metal hull.  
The creature raised its head to peer inside. The mess hall was empty. Lurke and Herzig were forced to use its one long table as an operating table during the bloody aftermath of the creature’s previous attack. Bloodied bandages, clot-crusted cotton balls, and strips of hastily cut off clothing littered the floor around it.  
Silently the creature reached in with one long arm, mitt-like hand pressed against the inside wall for leverage. It pushed its head through next, nictating lids blinking from the pain, rubbery skin compressed, slick with river slime. Bit by bit the creature, much larger than any normal man, squeezed its rubbery, flexible body through a porthole barely large enough for a child to wiggle through.  
Several long minutes later it walked its arms along the floor as it dragged its legs inside. Crouched on the floor, the creature peered about, finding itself alone in the mess hall with, gasping in the hot stagnant air tasting of antiseptic chemicals and dried blood.  
Growing bolder with confidence, the creature rose to its full height and began to stealthily stalk forward.

Martin Unger’s belly was torn open by the claws of the attacking creature. He’d held his innards inside with his own hands until comrades loaded him on a makeshift stretcher and hurried him below. Dr. Lurke sewed his belly shut, without any anesthesia except a stiff belt of liquor. The Doctor assured him that he’d been remarkably lucky. The skin and muscles of his belly had been ripped open by the claws, but his intestines and other organs had not been seriously injured.  
If Martin could hold on for a few days, if he could avoid infection, he might actually survive.  
Lurke gave him a blessedly strong dose of morphine and Martin mercifully slept for hours.  
Much later, his eyes flickered open to find Dr. Herzig standing over him, carefully loading another syringe. Martin’s belly felt like it was on fire, like army ants were gnawing away at him from under the skin and stitches. The pain was so strong that he involuntarily curled and twisted his toes from it.  
He looked up at Dr. Herzig with relief and gratitude.  
The weaselly little man looked down at him, a wide smile on his face. He checked Martin’s forehead with on hand, frowning and shaking his head sadly.  
“Fever.” The Doctor said, as if pronouncing a death sentence.  
Then he balled his fist and injected the syringeful of morphine into his own arm.  
“I need this more than you do, soldier.” The Doctor said, sighing contentedly.  
“You’re probably just going to die anyway.”  
He smiled again, baring white teeth like a grinning skull.  
“Seig Heil!” He said in a sing-song childlike tone.  
Then he walked away, leaving Martin to writhe in helpless agony.  
Hours later, Martin Unger’s eyes flickered open again. The room swam and tilted around him, distorted as if he were seeing it through rippled water. Other wounded soldiers reclined or sat in the bunks around him. A couple of others were like him, too injured to sit up on their own. Most though, were awake and well enough to complain to each other, to pick at their bandages, or half-heartedly play cards. The air in the crew cabin was thick and hot and stale. Hot wet air slithered in through the open portholes like invisible snakes.  
Sweat rolled down Martin’s forehead and cheeks. His mouth was blisteringly dry, his lips too cracked, his tongue too stiff to even beg his companions for water.  
When he saw a monster creep into the room, somehow unnoticed by the other wounded soldiers, he assumed it was a fever-born hallucination. Martin blinked, but the creature was still there, stalking silently nearer, dripping with river water.   
Martin opened his mouth to try to shout a warning, but his mouth was too dry. He was barely able to make a hiss-like rasping sound.   
Violence exploded in wet red blossoms and screams. The creature lunged forward, slashing wildly with curved claws. Men were torn to ribbons. One was ripped to red shreds, turned to run, only to get more claws raking his bare back.  
Drops of blood rained all over the room. Sticky splatters fell on Martin’s face. While the rest screamed and thrashed, Martin froze. He sank back into the bunk, held his breath and stared fixedly at the bottom of the bunk above him. Heavy footsteps slapped the floor, walking right up beside Martin’s bunk. A thick wet reptilian musk filled his nostrils, mixed with the stench of river slime.  
The thing beside him bellowed, deep and resonant, just like it had on the night Martin was wounded.  
Martin wanted to pray, but his lips wouldn’t move. His brain was too numb with horror to remember the words. His eyes remained riveted on the bunk above, refusing to slide sideways enough to glimpse the creature, not two feet from him.   
There was some thumping from the top bunk. A muffled cry of terror.  
The creature bellowed again.  
The bunk stack shuddered and shook violently. Wet ripping sounds. Terrible repeated bangs as huge fists hit the top bunk, or something on it, so hard that the wooden board cracked.  
There was some shuddering, some kicking heels beating a fast tattoo that grew slower and weaker until they stopped and the rocking of the bunks stopped with them.  
The thing continued to stand next to Martin’s bunk. There was a strange pop-whistle-wheeze that Martin recognized as the creature gasping for breath.  
Martin continued to hold completely still.  
He willed himself invisible.  
After an eternity, the inhuman presence next to him stepped away. There was shouting from the direction of the mess hall, followed by the sound of gunfire, then screams.  
The creature had moved away, to spread its slaughter elsewhere without even noticing poor Martin Unger.  
He wept silently with relief.


End file.
